Lifelong Learning Drives Your Career
When you think you’ve arrived, you should retire.
by Shane Christopher
Tom Larkin learned a lot. Tom, a military transitioner I once knew, was excited about graduating from business school. To him, it meant an end to 25 years of continuous school and studying. You see, after finishing college, he went through two years of Navy nuclear power school, nearly two years of surface warfare (SWO) qualifications, study for his engineer’s exam, recruiting school and finally, three years to earn his MBA. This 29-year-old had spent every year since h
e was four in school. Now he was ready to have someone pay him for how much he knew but did he ever have something to learn!
1. An education gives you the license to learn more.
The learning after your formal education will take a different form. Textbooks become newspapers and trade magazines. Exams become projects assigned by your boss. And homework becomes research. The result is the same. You’re still learning.
2. An education teaches you a way to look at things and how to solve problems.
I graduated from college with a degree in engineering. I thought I was smart because I memorized Boyle’s Law and could apply it to a heat transfer problem. But I wasn’t smart because I could regurgitate a formula that could be found in any textbook. (WARNING NOTE: Never go into a field where the work is so repetitive or basic that you can be replaced by a machine.) I was smart because I was taught to solve problems in a very logical manner, one that efficiently resulted in a solution. I could evaluate and react. I was trained to make good decisions. The specific details of what you learn pale in importance to the logic, reasoning and problem-solving skills you learn.
3. An education propels you to a more sophisticated place.
An educated friend of mine used to tell me how he envied his high school dropout father. You see, from his father’s perspective, while he was never educated, he had everything he had ever wanted; a small home, a car that ran, two healthy children and food on the table. His father was the monarch of his little domain.
But an education makes your world larger and shows you how to understand it. It teaches you to question things. (ANOTHER WARNING NOTE: One negative by-product of sophistication and education is dissatisfaction with the status quo, and the potential for cynicism at the world’s dysfunction.)
4. An education proves that you have potential in a certain field.
You passed all of your exams and have shown a propensity for success in your chosen field. What you haven’t shown yet is actual success in that field. Even Number One draft picks can bust.
“An educated friend of mine used to tell me how he envied his high school dropout father.”
5. Finishing an education is when the real learning starts.
Did you ever wonder why a graduation ceremony is called a “commencement?” Webster’s defines “commencement” as a beginning, a start. The people who graduated with degrees like yours 20 years ago have been using that degree for 20 years. Do you think they know more than you know now? Most of what you learned in school is stuff that someone else already figured out and told you. That doesn’t exactly differentiate you from others. Taking that baseline of knowledge and coming up with new stuff is what makes you special.
6. An education gives you a lifelong thirst for learning.
The most successful people I’ve ever known have been the most curious. Peter Jennings was arguably one of the top journalists of our time. Amazingly, Peter didn’t even graduate from high school. Perhaps the biggest compliment his colleagues paid him, and perhaps the biggest reason for his success, was that he had a powerful curiosity. He was constantly questioning, constantly learning. That trait enabled him to acquire more knowledge and frame his storiesin a way that was often better than his competitors.
If you’re afraid to ask why for fear of looking stupid, you’ll never learn anything and you’ll continue the spiral of ignorance.
If you’re like Tom Larkin and you refrain from learning because you’re sick of studying, you should instead look forward to a different type of learning after your formal education.
If you think you know it all, you should retire. Your competition realizes they don’t know it all.
One question I always ask in a job interview: “Do you have any questions for me?” The interviewee who has none clearly lacks the curiosity and foresight to be successful working for me.
Get curious. A commitment to and a love of lifelong learning may be the most important trait for success.